LETTER XLI.
Benton Barracks Hospital,
May 7.
Dear Mother,—We are having very warm weather;
too hot to be absolutely pleasant, but the trees are beginning
to be beautiful, and the grass is lovely,—
such a beautiful green! Our sick here are, for the
most part, getting well; this weather is doing them
good; the coughs are leaving them, and appetites fast
coming to them. One of my nurses is just getting
over the measles, and another down with erysipelas,
very sick; I feel anxious about her. I wonder what
you are all doing at home. I am afraid there will be
heavy work here. Down by the river, as well as in the
Southern States, our news is not good. Three years
since Sumter surrendered! But we have done much
in that time; and now, I hope, the end is a little
nearer. I do not want to give up working among the
soldiers while the war lasts; it is pleasant to help if
it is ever so little. And I shall not be of any particular
use to anybody when the war is over, for all I am
good for is to nurse, and tie up compound fractures.
I am glad I am good for something. To-morrow is
Sunday; I shall think of you all. I enclose a photograph
of a slave woman. Her hair is the color of
Kittie's, only brighter brown; her complexion Saxon,
so much so that, if she were in a room with white
persons, you would not know she was not white also.
She is probably octoroon. She is prettier than her
.picture, she has such a beautiful complexion. She has
been a slave till now. I shall have some queer things
to tell you that I do not dare put on paper. I have a
pretty bouquet on my table that one of my nurses sent
me. Flowers are late this year. But we shall all soon
be where the flowers are never late and the spring-time
never blighted. I suppose you are busy getting ready
for summer. I hope you are comfortably arranged
now. I wish I could write you an entertaining letter,
but I have so few ideas, and I feel dull and stupid.
My sick men care for me, and their faces brighten
when I go to them; I am glad there are some people
in the world happier for my having lived in it.
